National Labor Committee for Palestine Pledges to Raise $1,000,000 This Year

A decision to raise $1,000,000 for Palestine in 1942, which would more than double the $477,000 raised this year, was adopted here today by the 17th annual convention of the National Labor Committee for Palestine at which a comprehensive survey of Palestine Jewry’s contributions to the Allied war effort was presented.

About 3,000 delegates from the United States and Canada also adopted a three-fold program providing:

1-The Jewish people be guaranteed the right to work and live in whatever country they are in, be permitted to return to their country of origin after the war and be allowed to continue their Jewish identity and develop their own religion and culture.

2-Palestine must be a Jewish state of such magnitude to enable the immigration of millions of Jews ruined by the war. Until then Palestine should remain under the British mandate, in its original form as based on the Balfour declaration. No change shall be made in the status of Palestine without Jewish participation.

3-A Jewish army in Palestine.

The convention formulated a number of plans for the accelerated reconstruction of Palestine as a Jewish National Home and heard reports from Joseph Schlossberg, national chairman of the organization, Isaac Hamlin, national secretary, Israel Mereminsky, general secretary of the Histadruth, Yehudith Simchonit, leader of Palestine working women, Hayim Greenberg, leading American Labor Zionist, Alexander Kahn, Judge Samuel Liebowitz and others. Matthew Woll, vice-president of the American Federation of Labor, delivered an address supporting the efforts of the Jews to rebuild Palestine.

Messages supporting the creation of Palestine as a Jewish National Home and lauding the activities of the National Labor Committee and the Histadruth were received from Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the British Labor Party, William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, Senator James Mead of New York and Walter Schevenels, general secretary of the International Federation of Trade Unions.